From our partners at The Agonist
Oct 21
BBC – The US has held a meeting with representatives of the Haqqani militant network, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has revealed.
She did not give any details about who was involved or where they met.
But one senior US official said the meeting took place over the summer, before several major attacks against US interests in Afghanistan.
Mrs Clinton has been in talks in Islamabad where she has urged Pakistan to clamp down on the Haqqanis.
She said the US held one preliminary meeting with the Haqqani network “to see if they would show up”.
“In fact, the Pakistani government officials helped to facilitate such a meeting,” Mrs Clinton told Pakistani journalists.
She added: “We have reached out to the Taliban, we have reached out to the Haqqani network to test their willingness and their sincerity, and we are now working among us – Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States – to try to put together a process that would sequence us toward an actual negotiation.”
Reports about such a meeting circulated over the summer but the US refused to confirm them at the time.
